All Episodes
Jan. 24, 2018 - Sean Hannity Show
01:36:53
Why Sessions is So Important - 1.24

Chief political correspondent for the Washington Examiner, Byron York, joins Sean to discuss the latest FBI text scandal and looks to the future where Attorney General Jeff Sessions will be expected to play a very important role. The Sean Hannity Show is live weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

|

Time Text
This is an iHeart podcast.
You want smart political talk without the meltdowns?
We got you.
I'm Carol Markowitz and I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
We've been around the block in media and we're doing things differently.
Normally is about real conversations.
Thoughtful, try to be funny, grounded, and no panic.
We'll keep you informed and entertained without ruining your day.
Join us every Tuesday and Thursday.
Normally.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Ben Ferguson.
And I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
So down with Verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
When I told people I was making a podcast about Benghazi, nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked, why?
Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies.
From Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries, this is Fiasco, Benghazi.
What difference at this point does it make?
Listen to Fiasco, Benghazi, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Let not your heart be troubled.
You are listening to the Sean Hannity Radio Show Podcast.
Hey, like most of you, I had, not have, had trouble sleeping, but I sleep better than ever.
And you know what?
It's all because of a pillow.
Mike Lindell's My Pillow has changed my life for the better, and it works.
What makes My Pillow so different is their patented adjustable fill.
Now you can adjust the patented fill to your exact individual comfort need and get the support you absolutely must have.
And that means you fall asleep faster, you stay asleep longer, it just works.
Now, millions of people have already discovered that my pillow works for them, and now it's time for you to experience my pillow for yourself.
Just go to mypillow.com, use the promo code Sean, and when you do, Mike Lindell will give you his best offer ever.
Buy one MyPillow, get another one absolutely free.
Now, MyPillow is made in the USA, has a 10-year warranty, and a 60-day unconditional money-back guarantee, so you have nothing to lose.
So get started and get the sleep you crave and deserve.
Mypillow.com, promo code Hannity, and get Mike Lindell's special two-for-one offer.
That's mypillow.com, promo code Sean.
All right, more massive developments today.
This is getting more interesting by the minute.
Glad you are with us.
Write down our toll-free telephone number.
You know what we're calling this Deep State Gate state-sponsored sabotage?
You know, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but those that have been wrong and lying to their audiences for over a year, this is outrageous.
People like Hannity, they're attacking the FBI and our intelligence community with abandon.
And they're getting the support of Russian trolls and bots.
This is what I'm reading and hearing about myself today.
Let me be very clear to you idiots that missed the biggest story in your career, that say you work in this business of journalism.
You know, those of you that, you know, have this inner circle amongst yourself and this little bubble you've created for yourself and this little echo chamber that you've created for yourself.
Let me tell you right now, there's nobody on the air that I know of today that has throughout his entire career supported and praised, rightly so, law enforcement, which includes police officers, and that would mean firemen and our military.
We'll add them to the list.
Paramedics, the FBI, the CIA, and yeah, the intelligence community, which I have many friends in the FBI.
I have many friends in the Intel community.
They all thank me for what I am doing.
They're more disgusted than I am about the latest developments.
I've always gone out of my way to say that this is not the rank and file.
This is not the special agent in a field office working for the FBI.
This is not the person that does the deep intelligence dive using the weaponry of intelligence that is more sophisticated than it's ever been.
I absolutely, positively have been making a distinction.
But that doesn't stop those on the left.
Do you realize at the end of this, we're going to see how wrong these people have been, how off course they have been.
Now, I see that they're all obsessed with, oh, Mueller set to question Bannon and Trump on Flynn and Goncome.
Obstruction of justice.
Oh, okay.
So you couldn't get anybody on the Trump-Russia thing?
Now we're onto that.
Okay, why not?
We'll try anything that sticks at this point.
But what has happened is the media has missed the biggest story of their careers.
And they've missed it because of really blinded, partisan viciousness on their part.
They never, remember, they laughed at the idea that Trump was going to run.
They laughed at the idea that he could win.
On election night, it was like a funeral watching these people on television.
And election night, November 8th, 2016, every network, same thing, funeral.
It was like they lost their best friend.
They couldn't believe.
And they have since that time not accepted the verdict of the American people.
Now the problem is, and I've been very specific, is those people at the highest levels of the FBI, of the Justice Department, and of the Intel community, they have done things that are extraordinarily dangerous to the rule of law and to our Constitution, our Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure.
And what we're doing is slowly and now pretty surely exposing all of this, and it's all beginning to come together.
And we're just going to keep going until we get to the absolute truth about what happened with the hope that something like this could never happen again in the United States of America.
And the fact that we're doing their job for them is, I guess, frustrating to them.
And so they want to lash out against me.
I think the funniest thing I've ever seen is, you know, Mother Jones is like this radical, radical, left-wing, you know, publication.
I don't even think they publish.
I think they're just an online thing that nobody reads anymore.
And the headline is, and they put a nice ugly picture up of me with like the Twitter birds, except they're not blue and white.
It's red and white.
And Sean Hannity is now a favorite weapon of Russian trolls attacking America.
I guess the next thing they're going to accuse me of colluding with Vladimir Putin.
Remember they went after poor Michael Cohn, the attorney for Donald Trump?
And they tried to say, oh, he went to Russia and he shows his passport.
No, never been to Russia.
Oopsie-daisy.
Anyway, what's funny about this, it goes, soon after Trump's blah, blah, blah, Michael Flynn, plea deal, special counsel, Kremlin-linked trolls began wrapping up their social media attacks on the Russia investigation, tweeting out dozens of articles from Fox News far-right outlets aimed at undermining the credibility of the FBI, the Department of Justice, so-called deep state.
When we have a problem with the deep state, which I've been outlining for you, that's why I'm calling this deep state gate, state-sponsored sabotage.
Yeah, I am calling it that.
Does that mean I'm talking about everybody in the CIA?
No.
Everybody, no, not everybody in the FBI.
You know, it's just like saying if you have one bad pastor who does something wrong, well, not every pastor acts that way.
There are good people.
And just because you have one bad cop doesn't mean every cop is bad.
But you do have some people that have abused their power.
And we now have the evidence to prove it.
And we're proving it every single day.
And it's taken a long time, but they laughed when Donald Trump tweeted out that he'd been spied upon.
Well, we broke that story almost a year ago.
It's taken a year to get to this point.
And what have we learned?
Well, I'll listen to Donna Brazil.
She was the chair of the DNC.
And when she took over after Debbie Wassum and Schultz got into her problems, and she did a deep dive into the DNC, and what did she find?
She found that Hillary Clinton and the DNC had rigged the election in Hillary's favor.
Okay, I'll accept that as truth.
I've never in my entire life heard of an FBI director in the case of James Comey.
And now we have the text messages with Peter Strzzok.
Peter Strzzok was involved in everything.
And he had a background and an expertise in all things Russia.
And he's the one that was saying there's no there.
By the way, let me go back to that.
Remember, so this is the guy that is calling Trump all sorts of names, F-Trump, blah, blah, blah, some, and on and on and on from there with his mistress girlfriend.
That's the girl lawyer, the woman lawyer that was advising Andrew McCabe.
Andrew McCabe and Strzok and Paige were the ones talking about an insurance policy.
If God forbid Trump wins, and then, of course, they're talking about Loretta Lynch and Loretta Lynch.
Oh, it's a profile in courage because Loretta Lynch knows that they're not going to indict Hillary.
We know it's a sham.
And Strzzok and Comey are writing an exoneration in early May of Hillary Clinton.
They don't interview Hillary Clinton until the 4th of July weekend.
And 17 other key players in the investigation they had and interviewed.
So you're writing an exoneration of somebody that you didn't investigate.
That sounds like the fix is in.
That sounds to me like Comey and Strzok and Loretta Lynch at some level and Paige at some level, like they knew the fix was in so that their chosen candidate wouldn't get indicted and they would subvert the rule of law to allow her to continue to run for president.
I'm sure it would have been chaotic if they indicted her.
We know she committed multiple felonies.
We've been over them numerous times on radio and TV.
So they made the decision.
So the fix was in on the primary.
Then the fix is in that they're not going to do a real investigation.
They're going to exonerate before investigate.
And then we know that, you know, up to a year now, we have no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion because there is no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.
And the fact that Mueller and his corrupt merry band of Obama, Clinton, and DNC donors and his, you know, corrupt Andrew Weissman, who loses in the Supreme Court 9-0, tens of thousands of people lose their jobs.
And then, of course, four innocent people go to jail, Merrill executives, only to be found an overturn in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Yeah, let's hire that guy with his great track record.
And then let's hire only people that donate to Hillary Clinton, Obama, and the DNC.
No Republican.
We can't find a Republican investigator anywhere.
The same guy that hired Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.
They both worked on this thing, too.
What's fascinating is we got a new bit of information.
Sarah Carter is going to break it in the next hour.
I'll give you a little bit of a headline here.
After Peter Strzok and sends Paige, Lisa Page, a text on March 19th, there's no there there regarding the Trump-Russia collusion allegation.
I don't think I want to go work on that.
There's no there there.
This was his area of expertise.
He's talking about joining Mueller's special counsel.
And then a few minutes later, we're now finding out that he sent a text saying, well, an investigation that leads to an impeachment?
Maybe I should.
We already know he thinks the president is loathsome.
We already know that he's saying F. Trump.
We already know he wanted Hillary to win.
We already know that he was the one that eventually ended up interviewing Hillary Clinton and giving her a pass.
Loretta Lynch, you know, they're writing each other, Paige and Strzzok on July 1st, three days before Hillary's even interviewed on that particular case.
Oh, she's showing such a profile and courage.
She knows that we're not doing anything to Hillary.
She's doing it anyway.
Oh, such bad timing that she got caught with Bill Clinton on the tarmac in Phoenix.
They're talking about their grandkids.
Yeah, we believe that.
You know, this has now come down to whether or not you've got a rigged primary.
I would think that would be cause for an investigation.
A rigged Hillary Clinton email server investigation.
Nobody writes an exoneration before investigation.
Anyone tells you that?
Give me another example.
Then you've got Hillary.
We didn't know for a long time.
She, her campaign, funneled through a lawyer up to $12 million and also through the same lawyer with the DNC that Donna Brazil says she was controlling the money to pay for a fusion GPS.
MI6 agent hired, you know, Christopher Steele dossier with known lies, propaganda, misinformation.
I guess if you've rigged the primary, it's not a bad idea to try and rig the general election.
Why not?
And the worst part of all of this is that information, those lies were used as a predicate to get a FISA warrant under the pretext of going after Carter Page, but in reality, it was to spy on an opposition candidate in an election year.
I know some of you in the media are having a hard time keeping up.
That's why I'm saying it is I'm trying to explain this in the simplest terms possible.
And not only was that FISA warrant issued, but then it continued after Donald Trump won.
And now we're hearing about, oh, let's see, a secret society meeting among these top people, not rank and file, top people.
Wow.
By the way, I wonder if the Russians, how ironic would it be if the Russians had hacked Peter Strzok and Lisa Page's text messages?
Maybe they have copies of them.
Anyway, 800-9.1 Sean is a toll-free telephone number.
You want to be a part of the program.
We've got a lot coming up in the course of the show today.
Cheryl Atkinson, Byron York will stop by today, and Chairman Goodlatt.
Chairman Goodlatt is doing a lot of good work along with it looks like Trey Gowdy has woken up from his slumber recently.
And Devin Nunes.
We'll get to that.
Deep State Gate, State Sponsored Sabotage.
Isn't that what it really is all about?
A deep state, a group of people that think they know better than the American people, that ignore crimes, that don't investigate.
I mean, if we're going to allow Fourth Amendment constitutional protections to be destroyed like this, we will lose our country.
And just for political partisan purposes, because they didn't like Donald Trump.
You know, Watergate on steroids, the deep state betrayal of a duly elected president, call it what it, the ultimate deep state betrayal of the American people and the president, a coordinated deep state effort to destroy the president, deep state subversion of American democracy, federally funded betrayal of a president, government against the people, the deep state war and the president.
Now, these are things that all of you, regardless of where your politics are, need to understand is fundamentally corrupt.
You've got to understand this should not happen.
You should not have people as abusively biased as Peter Strzok and Lisa Page involved in an investigation.
You can't allow a guy like Robert Mueller to run a special counsel and Robert Mueller hire Democratic donors.
You can't hire somebody like Andrew Weissman with his atrocious track record of abuse and failure.
In one case, he held back exculpatory evidence.
Tens of thousands of people lost their jobs out of the Enron Anderson accounting investigation that he headed up.
And then it was a 9-0 decision, obstruction reversal in the U.S. Supreme Court.
You never get a 9-0.
Never get a 9-0 in the Supreme Court.
Well, you hardly do.
Then you put, you know, Merrill executives in jail for a year, and that's overturned by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
And then you got reports of, I was listening to Ron Johnson talking about, you know, high-level FBI officials said to be involved in anti-Trump secret society meeting off campus.
What the hell is going on here?
You know, now we have Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, you know, they knew that it was never going to happen against Hillary Clinton.
Well, that's a sham of an investigation.
Do you believe in equal justice under the law?
Do you believe in the Constitution?
Do you believe that we should apply laws equally?
James Comey writing the exoneration before ever investigating, Loretta Lynch knowing about it, Strzzok knowing about it, McCabe knowing about it, talk of an insurance policy.
And just like Watergate, now we got 18 and a half minutes of missing tape, five months of missing text.
Well, that happened to 10% of agents at the time we're now learning.
Okay.
All right, 25 till the top of the hour.
I'm going to get to your calls here.
No, I'm trying not to be repetitive, but every time you get new information like we have today and we'll have tonight, you got to set the foundation.
I mean, this is a very, I mean, look, I understand most people's lives are busy.
This is what my job is: to try and bring you up to speed with the latest information.
But if you missed yesterday's show or the day before, I've just got to assume you got to be brought up to speed.
So a little bit of this becomes repetitive as I wrap it around all the new information.
And the new information is, as I was telling you earlier, I mean, this is pretty spectacular.
I mean, Strzok and Page regarding, well, there's no there.
I mean, that speaks volumes of how none of this should ever happen.
And then, of course, he texts Lisa Page later and says, you know, an investigation that leads to an impeachment?
Maybe I should.
And Strzok is up to his eyeballs in all of this.
I don't know what to make of Ron Johnson's comments.
Anyway, he was on Fox News last night.
I think it was on Brett Baer's program.
I've heard from someone who has talked to our committee that there's a group of individuals in the FBI who are holding secret off-site meetings, he said.
I think there are indications there were a number of high-level FBI officials, again, not rank and file, that were holding secret meetings off-site.
And he revealed that the committee had an informant when he said that he is still connecting the dots between the sources' information and the text messages that he and other lawmakers have reviewed.
And he said, understand that Strzok and Page were very high-level in the FBI, not rank and file.
Hello, conspiracy TV, MSNBC.
I am not talking about rank and file, FBI, law enforcement, or intelligence.
I am talking about the highest levels abusing power.
Anyway, and then he said that these are not low-level underlings, he said.
These are individuals that had access to the highest level to the director of the FBI.
It's all beginning to make sense.
Anyway, listen to what Ron Johnson said on Brett Baer's show.
What this is all about is further evidence of corruption, more than bias, but corruption at the highest levels of the FBI.
And that secret society, we have an informant that's talking about a group that were holding secret meetings off-site.
There's so much smoke here, there's so much suspicion.
Let's stop there.
A secret society, secret meetings off-site of the Justice Department.
Correct.
And you have an informant saying that.
Yes.
Is there anything more about that?
No, we have to dig into it.
This is not a distraction.
Again, this is biased, potentially corruption at the highest levels of the FBI that is now investigating.
And by the way, Robert Mueller used to run the FBI.
He is in no position to do an investigation over this kind of misconduct.
So I think at this point in time, we probably should be looking at a special counsel to undertake this investigation, but Congress is going to have to continue to dig.
That is bizarre to me.
Anyway, secret meetings off-site.
Now the FBI is saying that as much as 10%, and I'm reading from the broke on Fox News earlier today, that up to nearly 10% of the FBI's 35,000 employee phones may have had the same glitch, if you will, as Strzok and Page's phones.
I don't know what that means.
All right, I'll get to the phones here.
We'll take a lot of your calls, comments, your questions, anything you want to talk about, but I'm assuming this is something that's on everybody's mind.
Orlando, Florida, News Radio, WDBO.
We have Sally next.
Hi, Sally.
How are you?
Hey, Sean.
My question is: is Peter Strzzok the mastermind behind all of the things that he's doing against Trump?
And who is getting paid for all that?
Well, they're all getting paid.
The fact that Strzok and Paige aren't fired is beyond any comprehension I have.
Since we know they abused their power, had a huge bias.
They didn't reveal the bias.
The bias was eventually picked up by Robert Mueller.
But remember, it was Strzz that was writing the exoneration with Comey before they ever investigated Hillary.
It was Strzzok that interviewed Hillary.
It was Strzz that interviewed General Flynn.
Strzok is up to his eyeballs in pretty much all of this stuff.
And the fact that he, I think he should be fired, Page should be fired.
McCabe should be fired.
Comey is fired.
I'd like to know Rod Rosenstein's position in all this, but not only that, all of them need to be investigated.
And I actually think we need a special counsel now to investigate this mess completely.
And Robert Mueller should be investigated as well.
I agree.
Thank you.
All right, Sally.
Thank you.
You know, hey, people, friends of mine are saying, you're done, Hannity.
That's it.
You've taken on the deep state.
They'll get you six ways and sideways, to quote Chuck Schumer.
What a sad commentary.
What a sad commentary that the people that have the most powerful tools that we entrust the most powerful tools of intelligence think that they would know better that they would turn it on their own people.
President-elect's latest unsolicited pronouncement on the intelligence community.
This was his tweet just a little while ago tonight.
See the scare quotes there.
The intelligence briefing on so-called Russian hacking was delayed until Friday.
Perhaps more time needed to build a case.
Very strange.
But he's taking these shots, this antagonism, he's taunting to the intelligence community.
You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.
So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he's being really dumb to do this.
What do you think the intelligence community would do if they were moving?
I don't know, but from what I am told, they are very upset with how he has treated them and talked about them.
The only thing that could suggest is they would use the weaponry, the things, the tools, the power that we give them and abuse it six ways to Sunday to screw you because they don't like you, because they disagree with you.
Kind of speaks volumes about corruption.
I'd like to believe that our intelligence community would not do that.
I would like to believe there are people with integrity that honor what we entrust them with and not turn those tools of intelligence against their own people.
Because that sounds like a police state, what they're describing, what Schumer's describing.
Jim in Idaho, next on the Sean Hannity show.
What's up?
How are you?
Hey, I'm great.
How about you?
I'm good, sir.
What's happening?
Hey, I've been following this really closely, and the only way I can describe it is I think that what these handful of people have done is the biggest civil rights violation this country's ever seen.
I think it's the biggest voting rights violation this country's ever seen.
And I think it falls under the law of sedition.
And frankly, I'm taking it really personally.
I have a vote, and they're not going to take it.
They're not going to sit in a back room in a office somewhere and take my vote.
It's just not going to happen.
I don't think there's any way to put this nicely, you know, other than the ways that we have been rightly characterizing this.
I mean, this is a, you know, deep state.
I'm calling a deep state gate.
It's state-sponsored sabotage.
And they wanted to use, they were willing to use unsubstantiated Hillary Clinton bought and paid for lies after they helped exonerate her when we know she committed felonies.
We know it.
I mean, it's so obvious.
It's like there's never been an open and shut case like Hillary in the email server.
Mishandling classified top-secret special access program information is a crime.
Destroying such is a crime.
James Comey's July 5th, 2016 press conference, he described crimes committed, but he had already put the fix in.
Yeah, you should take it personally because it impacts the rule of law, equal justice under the law, you know, protections, constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure.
I mean, this is an abuse of power and a conspiracy at that to abuse power.
It's frightening, actually.
And we've got to get a hold of this or we lose our country.
It's that simple.
Let's go to Keith in Claremont in Florida, next Sean Hannity show.
How are you?
Hey, Sean, great.
Thanks.
First-time caller.
Hey, I'm still upset that we haven't started investigating Uranium One, and I think that our Russian collusion investigation is covering that up.
I really think the Mueller is a big part of that.
He will be investigated once they get the Uranium One.
I'll tell you questions.
We had, and we will hear.
I mean, look, everything, there's only so many enemies you can have and fight at one time.
Similarly, there's so many stories you can dig deep like this into.
But the Uranium One story hasn't gone anywhere.
There was two weeks ago an 11-count indictment on it, and we have learned that, in fact, there's an ongoing investigation by the Department of Justice into it.
We just didn't know about it until a couple of weeks ago.
We have an 11-count indictment.
But here's the thing: Robert Mueller was the FBI director.
They had an FBI spy informant inside of this network that Vladimir Putin, the bad actor he is, from this hostile nation, Russia, and they wanted a foothold in the uranium market.
We don't even have enough uranium for ourselves, never mind allowing someone else to have control over it.
And Putin's thugs in America were involved in bribery and extortion and kickbacks and money laundering and racketeering.
And we had a guy on the inside telling them, hey, this is happening.
That's 18 months before Siphius ever bothered to approve the nine different cabinet positions approved this uranium one sale, which resulted in Putin taking control of 20% of our uranium.
Robert Mueller knew that 18 months in advance.
Eric Holder knew that 18 months in advance.
And we're going to hear from this guy that had infiltrated this network for six years.
Victoria Tunsing is representing him.
You there?
Go ahead.
Sean Mueller escorted 10% of our uranium to the Russians.
20%.
Well, I know the story you're talking about.
I know what you're talking about.
But all of this is going to come to all of this is next.
There's a lot of cleaning up we've got to get done here.
Let's go to Mike in Arizona.
Mike, hi.
How are you?
Hey, Sean.
I've got a friend in Los Angeles who does forensic computer work.
And again and again, he's told me that when there is spoilation of evidence, especially when they've been ordered to keep it, the presumption is that there is guilt.
Of course it's gone.
Listen, the only thing is, is how good a job did they do?
Because in the case of Hillary, we were able to retrieve some of these emails back, the ones she deleted and acid-washed and used bleach bit on and bashed up devices.
And it's really insane.
I mean, the fact that people say, oh, you got to move on, move on.
Well, if we move on, then you let people get away with crimes that the rest of us would go to jail for.
That's a problem.
Nothing surprised me at all because the real issue here is it could be Hillary Clinton going to jail, Bill Clinton going to jail, and maybe even Obama.
I think the fact that Obama emailed Hillary and then they changed it to a high-ranking American official, that's pretty damning on the part of Obama, who said he never knew a thing.
If I was him, I'd get a lawyer.
He probably already has one.
Trud, if I could just say one other thing.
By the way, I guess you can see why a lot of these people hate me now.
They don't like that we're talking about this every day.
Trust me.
Yeah, and Sarah Carter, too.
I love her.
Listen, we've got a team of deputies here that are rock stars.
John Sarah, Greg Jarrett, Victoria Tunsing, Tom Fitton, Jay Seculo, rock stars, all of them.
Yeah.
Truck, can you tell me, is it true?
I heard that Obama took a $2 billion that was earmarked for health care, and he appropriated a billion and a half of it, I'm sorry, and for neighborhood improvement.
And that's your smack of, I would bet that they have you.
I honestly don't know.
Off the top of my head, I don't know.
I wish I did.
I wish I had an answer for you.
We'll look into it.
As a matter of fact, Ethan's looking it up now.
Back to our phones as we say hi to Malcolm, St. John's, Florida.
A lot of Florida calls today.
What's going on?
Hey, how are you doing, Sean?
Thank you for everything that you're doing.
Thank you.
I just want to know if this Russian Trump collusion thing turns out to be a big hoax.
I want to know if the taxpayers are going to get reimbursed by Mueller and his cronies.
I've got something I'm going to call for on tonight's TV show.
I don't want to do it now today because I'm building a case.
But the answer is you're never going to see a dime back.
And I think Mueller's office is leaking.
You know, it's an old story, what they're saying.
Oh, you want to interview Trump?
Okay, we've heard that a million times.
I wouldn't let the president, if I was his attorney, you don't go near Robert Mueller because this is a corrupt investigation.
And I think it's been predicated on so many, and just look at what they did here.
And if I'm the attorney for Paul Manafort, if I'm the attorney for General Flynn, there'd be a million motions I'd be delivering.
All right, we got a lot coming up in the course of the program.
Byron York, Cheryl Atkinson.
Chairman Goodlatt is up next at the top of the hour.
All right, when we come back, the latest on Deep State Gate.
Yes, state-sponsored sabotage, trying to steal and influence a presidential election and unseat a duly elected president.
The news and information you will not get from the all network, fake news CNN, or conspiracy TV MSNBC or CBS NBC or ABC or the New York Times or Washington Post.
No, this is your show.
We'll continue.
All right, glad you're with us.
Hour two, Sean Hannity Show.
Our toll-free number is 800.
941, Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, there's a lot of things going on within Congress that I want to report to you.
And it's an honor to have back on the program Chairman Goodlatt.
He is at the House Judiciary Committee Chairman, Sarah Carter, a Fox News contributor, investigative journalist.
Welcome, both of you, Sarah.
I know you have news.
I want to first get to Chairman Goodlatt.
There have been a lot of questions, Chairman, about what should happen as it relates to everything that we have all been talking about now for some time, and especially as it relates to the investigation and the special counsel and James Comey's actions and Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and Andrew McCabe and Rod Rosenstein and others.
What do you think should happen?
Well, a lot of things need to happen.
First of all, this investigation by the Judiciary Committee and the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Trey Gowdy, Chairman, needs to continue to work.
We have worked for a few months now.
We have looked at thousands of documents.
We have interviewed some witnesses.
We have plenty more to talk to, both in terms of private interviews, but also some will need to come back and testify publicly eventually.
And that goes right to the top of the department and the FBI.
So it's very concerning.
We need to find those five months' worth of texts and keep the pressure on to do that.
We shouldn't just accept that they can produce them.
They may be able to be located by some other means.
And also we need to look at the other means by which people have communicated with each other about these very disturbing events.
So all of that will continue forward, and we're going to continue to press for more documents.
I know that Devin Nunes, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, is working with his committee to have a vote, I think, soon to release a memo, which is really the only way you can let the American people know what's going on here.
You can't release thousands of classified documents.
You've got to protect sources and methods of gathering information.
Lives will be endangered, but they're working hard to release a memo that takes out all the classified source information.
You've read this memo, right, sir?
What's that?
You've read the memo.
You went over and looked at it.
What are the adjectives, the words you'd use to describe it?
Well, I want to be careful here because there's much more to come.
But this is very concerning, and this is something very important for the American people to know.
We're talking about an issue that goes to power related to the election of the highest office in the land and involving both of the candidates for that office.
And quite frankly, Republicans and Democrats should be disturbed about what was going on.
I don't know how often you get a chance to watch my TV show, but I have talked at length about, for example, it bothers me that the fix was in and Donna Brazil says the Democratic primary was rigged.
I could only imagine how the media would react if it was Donald Trump.
But then it goes a step further.
then you've got an exoneration being written by Peter Strzok and James Comey, and apparently Loretta Lynch was in on it long before they ever interviewed Hillary Clinton.
We learned this from the...
It's striking, isn't it?
Yeah, I never heard of that.
How people in the Federal Bureau of Investigation, America's premier law enforcement organization, by the way, it still is because there's tens of thousands of people there protecting us, fighting crime, preventing terrorist attacks.
But this premier organization at the top in some of the key positions is striking the contrast between how they handled the Clinton email investigation and how they're handling the Trump-Russia investigation.
Well, and that's what I want to ask you.
So the fix was in, obviously, in my opinion, I've never heard of an exoneration being written months before you interview the key witnesses in a case.
Neither have I.
And then we've got a dossier that was bought and paid for full of Russian lies and misinformation.
And I would argue that that was to propagandize and lie to the American people to influence a general election.
But maybe some would call that op research.
I don't.
And then the scary thing is that it was used as a basis for a FISA warrant against an opposition party candidate in the lead up to an election and then used to spy on a president-elect and his team.
Am I missing anything here?
Well, this is something that is why the American people need to hear more about this so they can look at it and why this investigation needs to proceed on and why the Justice Department and the FBI need to clean house.
Well, I agree with you, and it's just very scary to me on a whole variety of levels.
Sarah Carter, let me bring you into this.
Now, you were kind enough and nice enough to bring me into your loop on a story that you're actually working on for tonight.
And apparently, we've missed something as it relates to the Strzok and Lisa Page emails when they were both talking, I guess, amongst each other and texting each other back and forth.
I'd still like the five months.
I'd like to see the missing five months.
But very specifically, when Peter Strzzk sends Page a memo on March 19th saying there's no there there, he follows it up with something that you found.
What is it?
Well, and I think this is fascinating because it was one of the pieces of text messages that were discussed of the newly released text messages, but everyone kind of seemed to walk right over it.
But at 12.30 a.m. on March 19th, this is just two days after the special counsel is convened, Strzok sends Lisa Page a text message.
He talks about the no there there.
He says, for me, and in this case, I personally have a sense of unfinished business, unleashed it with MYE, which he's talking about, the mid-year exam, and in reference to the Clinton investigation.
Now I need to fix it and finish it.
And then 10 minutes later, they're back and forth, back and forth on this special counsel and whether or not he's going to join it or not.
He says to her at 12.40 a.m., an investigation leading to impeachment, and he asks it as a question.
Yeah.
So in other words, oh, wait, wait a minute.
If I can investigate, there's no there there, but if it leads to impeachment, that's what it sounds like to me.
That's how it reads to me.
That's how it's reading to other members of Congress who really want to understand what was going on between these two and really want to question.
I'm sure Chairman Goodlot is, from what he's been saying, is just as concerned.
Think about this.
A person with such a central role in the special counsel, as we know Peter Strzzok had.
I mean, we know his background.
He was deputy assistant director of the counterintelligence division.
He had access.
He was involved in the Russia investigation.
He was involved in the Clinton server investigation.
Here he's talking about joining this special counsel and seeing it, apparently, as a way to impeach the President of the United States, a duly elected president of the United States.
And I'm in agreement with Chairman Goodlot on this.
I think not only do they need to try to retrieve, which I have been told, Mr. Chairman and Sean, that those text messages, if they have those Samsung 5 cell phones, they will be able to retrieve those text messages because even if they were wiped off the cell phones, they leave ghost markers.
And that's what I was told by a number of sources, even sources within the FBI that have done this in the past.
And they can go in and get those text messages.
So if they have those Samsung 5s, there should be no problem in getting those text messages off of that.
Do we know where those phones are, Mr. Chairman?
We do not.
And one would presume that if you became concerned about these thousands of text messages and took the step of removing Mr. Strzok from the Mueller investigation and sending him to the personnel department, which is an interesting thing in and of itself, that you would want to have in your possession those devices, would you not?
You would.
Do you have any doubt that Lisa Strzok and I'm sorry, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page should be fired?
Do you have any doubt that Andrew McCabe should be fired, considering he was involved, we believe, in the insurance policy comments, text messages between them?
I think more facts need to come out about some of the people, but the absolute bias and the talk about a secret society, and that harks back to the earlier talk about an insurance policy.
All of this raises huge questions that if I were the personnel director, I'd go to the director of the FBI and say, you know what, we got a problem here with these employees.
What are we going to do?
And I would haul them in there and I'd ask all kinds of questions, which maybe they've done that.
Maybe we'll find out.
But unless there's really good explanations for all these things, there are a number of people in the department who should not still be there.
Well, I mean, not only not be there, but shouldn't they be investigated?
I mean, in other words, do you feel that the...
Absolutely agree.
Yeah, and I think there's got to this investigation, I'm beginning to believe that the only way it's going to be fair is to have the appointment of another special counsel.
And then it raises a question for me.
Do you support that?
And what does this mean about Mueller's investigation from the get-go?
Doesn't it mean it was predicated on phony information that was bought and paid for?
I don't want to draw any conclusions about the Mueller investigation until we see the facts.
But let me just say, I think it's important that that investigation continue, but it's got to be in a manner that the American people trust and it's impartial.
And obviously, the information coming out is concerning there.
But I would not call for ending Mueller's investigation.
What I would call for, however, and have been for months, is the appointment of a second special counsel to look at all the improprieties that took place with regard to how Hillary Clinton's investigation was handled and the meeting on the tarmac and the decision by Comey to make this announcement himself and the changing of his statement to take out words that were critical to whether or not she met the language of the law in terms of violating the law,
in terms of gross negligence, and a whole host of other issues like that.
Now, whether this follows on that, I think, you know, your question is a very good one.
We should continue our investigation, and we should continue to press for an independent accounting of this.
We should also continue to press for at the highest levels of the Justice Department and the FBI and accounting for this as well.
Do you see any evidence of Trump-Russia collusion after a year of investigation?
Well, first of all, I'm not involved in the investigation, so I don't want to draw conclusions there, but I haven't seen any evidence of it.
Okay, understand.
Sarah, what else can you tell us?
That's it.
Yeah, and I think the important thing, too, is to remember that it's not just Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.
This keeps coming back.
I mean, this is what we have as far as the bulk of evidence that we're seeing from these text messages that were released by the Inspector General and the DOJ.
But there were other people involved, and Chairman Goodlott brought this up, you know, former FBI Director Comey.
There should be a re-questioning of Comey because Comey testified that he didn't make a decision until after he interviewed Hillary Clinton.
But it appears that he was not being forthright and maybe even apparently lying.
I mean, they would have to question him again because he made that decision way before.
If we look at the documents, they were making changes way before they even interviewed Hillary Clinton.
So it appeared his decision was already made.
I would like to see him re-questioned.
I also think, and I know Andrew McCabe has been interviewed both behind closed doors and in front of Congress, but I would like to know what Andrew McCabe's deputy director Andrew McCabe's role was in this because, I mean, the buck stops there.
The buck stops at Comey and Andrew McCabe's office.
So what were they involved in?
What did they know?
I'm hearing all kinds of rumblings that they know a lot more than what's been out there in public.
So we need to have these answers because this is about an election.
This is about the American people.
This is about our scales of justice.
And this is about the FBI, whose main role is to be objective and seek the facts.
And what we're seeing here appears to be a concerted effort by members within the FBI to basically change the results of an election, also possibly even release of criminality and behavior within the Clinton server investigation.
I mean, there is a lot here, and I think the American people really, Sean, deserve some answers.
I think the biggest fear I have, Chairman Goodlott, my last question to you is that, yeah, I think that this was all designed and a phony dossier bought and paid for by one candidate was designed to influence an election.
And that same dossier was then used as a foundation to get a FISA warrant, and that was to hurt the other candidate under false pretenses, and then also an incoming president.
It seems like in that sense, it's a conspiracy.
Would you agree with that?
Well, we've got to get the facts.
We've got to get the facts out, and we've got to continue this investigation.
And then I think we draw the conclusions about what exactly happened and what crimes may have been committed.
But there certainly is plenty for us to be worried about and plenty of work for us to do.
All right, sir.
Thank you.
And we'll see you, Sarah, tonight on Hannity, 9 Eastern on the Fox News channel.
We'll break this news in full.
She'll have an article up by then, SarahCarta.com.
Oh, so now the House Intel Democrats, by the way, Adam Schiff, I know what he wants to do in his next life.
I do.
He wants to work at MSNBC.
He's on TV lying just as much as the anchors are.
It's like a fixture there.
Anyway, they're releasing their own memo response to the one put out by the Republicans, according to Adam Schiff.
And he said, they're selectively and misleadingly characterizing classified information to protect the president.
I doubt it.
I doubt it.
And they have the corroborating evidence.
Let's release it all and let the American people decide.
How's that?
Why don't we ask Adam Schiff if he's going to do that?
All right, we've got a lot more coming up today.
Cheryl Atkinson at the bottom of the hour.
And you may remember she wrote the book, Smear, How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote.
Also, Byron York has been doing some great work over at the Washington Examiner.
We'll check in with him.
We got an amazing breaking news edition of Hannity tonight.
We're literally working on things as we speak.
We'll have it all ready for you by 9 p.m. Eastern on the Fox News channel.
We'll continue.
A whole bunch of documents, pages, memos, emails are missing.
How do you explain that?
This has nothing to do with documents, Wolf.
Zero.
We have a President of the United States who runs the executive branch.
That is, he runs the FBI, the CIA, the State Department.
Every time they disagree with him, instead of saying, I represent the American people by running the government, he says, let me persuade you, Americans, not to trust your government.
Don't trust the CIA in Russia.
Don't trust federal judges when they disagree with me.
Don't trust Rex Stillerson.
He shouldn't be negotiating with the North Koreans until he should.
And now we're saying one side of the House representing President Trump saying, I want to further denigrate the U.S. government, persuade the American people that their taxes are going for wrongful purposes instead of saying, I'm going to have a hearing with Democrats and Republicans and get to the bottom of this.
This is not about documents.
It's about persuading people that the investigation is inappropriate.
And Phil, the fact that the chairman of the House Intelligence Subcommittee, Devin Nunes, won't share a four-page memo he wrote with the FBI.
Well, it's not just sharing the memo.
How do you think he understands the details of how you conduct surveillance?
Do you think he knows what the law is?
Do you think he knows what FBI regulations are?
Do you think he's read through the telephone book of FBI regulations?
This is about a hatchet job.
And the hatchet job is on the effort to say what happened during the election with the Russian involvement with the Trump people.
Maybe nothing, but we won't know from the Congress because Devin Unez won't allow a nonpartisan investigation to take place.
It's unprecedented that he would be accusing the FBI of something and not allow them to see what he's accusing them of.
I mean, it's ridiculous on its face.
And the FBI has a right to complain about it.
You know, these people on the whole network, fake news, CNN, are they really that stupid?
Because it's an investigation of the Justice Department and of the FBI, and they're not going to cue them into the very things they're looking into.
And there should be an investigation into all of this.
And frankly, there ought to be a special counsel appointed because it's gotten that bad.
I mean, I don't even know where to start in terms of, I mean, this, these people, you know what it is?
Everybody in the mainstream media has bought into a phony, false, fraudulent narrative.
They bought into a lie.
And here we are a year later.
And not only is there no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, we do have evidence of a lot of collusion.
The collusion to fix a primary election with Hillary Clinton, just asked on a Brazil, the collusion between Strzok and James Comey to write an exoneration before any investigation.
And now we know that Loretta Lynch knew about this way before Hillary Clinton was even interviewed.
Well, that sounds like collusion to me.
Then a Hillary Clinton bought and paid for phony Russian dossier with salacious details that even Fusion GPS didn't even try to verify.
They tried to use that so they could influence and rig the general election against Donald Trump.
But even worse, they went and used this phony, unsubstantiated information, false information, Russia propaganda, bought and paid for by one party to sabotage another party.
And you're wondering why I am calling this deep stategate, state-sponsored sabotage, because that's exactly what it was from the get-go.
It's unbelievable.
Joining us now is Cheryl Atkinson.
She's the host of Sinclair Media's full measure, author of the brand new book, Smear, How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote.
He had a very cryptic tweet the other day.
The truth eventually finds a way to get told.
TikTok, you stole my TikTok thing.
Well, you know, I've been covering for quite some time things, issues and things that are, I think, all related in the end in ways we're maybe not looking in the big picture.
And I think I ended my first book, Stonewalled, or perhaps began it with a little quote that said, the truth finds a way to be told eventually.
And I believe that.
But I think in some respects, we're looking at maybe some of the media are looking at little pieces of this puzzle and not the big picture, because there is a lot of focus on what allegedly happened to Trump, the Trump campaign and Trump officials at the hand of intelligence officials after he was elected or right before he was elected.
I think the more important question, Sean, is why.
Why they didn't want Trump and his people in there.
And I believe the evidence is showing, and sources I have indicate, it's because they didn't want that wild card, meaning Donald Trump and his team, looking at, exposing, and examining some things that bad actors in the intel community have been doing the past 15, 20 years plus, and a whole system that they've established that has been doing things that are at the very least questionable and perhaps possibly illegal.
And they were desperate once he was elected to make sure that he and his people were marginalized or somehow discredited so that they could not look at the things that some of the intelligence community had been doing.
I don't think they ever thought Trump would win, which is why they stuck their necks out here.
And I think that they're, look, here's the bottom line.
I would think that all of the people in the news media in this country would look at this as the biggest story potentially that they'll ever have in their entire life.
You know, if one presidential candidate rigs a primary and then you got an FBI director coordinating with other high-ranking FBI officials and the Attorney General is in on it and they know crimes were committed.
We know felonies were committed.
Mishandling of classified information.
That in and of itself is a crime, a felony.
Destroying such classified special access, top-secret information.
That's a crime.
Obstructing justice.
Well, that might be not turning over 33,000 subpoenaed emails and then using acid wash or bleach bit to destroy all the evidence and then using hammers to destroy mobile devices.
That sounds like obstruction of justice in any world I would live in.
You know, you think you'd want to cover that?
So the fix is in on the primary.
The fix is in so she can continue to run against Trump because they think she's the better choice.
They think she's going to win.
And then, of course, she pays for a phony dossier, denies it for an entire year.
Only recently we found out that, yeah, the Clintons paid for it because Fusion GPS wouldn't give it up.
And they pay for the whole thing.
And then we find out that is the basis of a FISA warrant to spy on an opposition party candidate in a presidential election year.
And then an incoming president, a president-elect, and his entire team.
Now, I don't know if there's ever been corruption on this level in our lifetime, to be honest.
And if you want to compare it to Watergate, the so-called standard, you know, Watergate is like stealing a candy bar out of a candy store compared to this.
I would agree that the allegations that are put forth and the things sources have told me, including some who've worked under both Democrat and Republican administration, makes Watergate pale in comparison.
I think a lot of people today don't even really know what Watergate was about.
We refer to that as a phrase as if everybody knows.
It sounds like the worst thing ever.
But in terms of what we're talking about today, if big actors in the Intel community had been compromised for years in ways that we don't know about, this impact, Sean, I think you're getting at this, not just what happened during campaign 2016, but virtually every big case that was handled by our Intel community, I think, would have to be reexamined in a new light if it turns out that corruption is proven at high levels in our Intel.
Do you have any doubt?
This is huge.
Let's go through it slowly.
Do you have any doubt that Donna Brazil is wrong, that in fact that the primary of Hillary with Bernie Sanders was rigged?
I don't have any doubt.
Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by rigged, but it's pretty clear from people inside the Democrat Party that they certainly slanted everything they could to favor one candidate over the other.
Isn't that rigging?
I don't know.
You can say that and I wouldn't argue with you.
Do you have any disagreement that what James Comey and Peter Strzok did, knowing especially how Peter Strzok and Lisa Page is his mistress girlfriend over at the FBI, what they think and their talk about insurance policies.
And don't you think that they were exonerating Hillary by writing that exoneration, draft way before, months before they ever interviewed the key principles in that investigation?
Does that sound normal?
Yeah, no, I think that that is highly, highly suspect when you put that especially when you're thinking about it.
But aren't you being kind?
Have you ever heard of an exoneration before investigation before?
I haven't.
I haven't, but I'm trying to be not kind so much as I've never spoken and to other people.
And judicious.
I got it.
I'm going to say that stuff.
Yes.
I wouldn't argue with some of your characterizations, but I don't know that this isn't done all the time.
I don't know that, Sean, they haven't done that improperly with other investigations, but we just don't know what to do.
Okay, but that doesn't take away that this is not normal procedure.
You know, taking it out of the FBI field agents' hands and putting it in a special category, well, that only happens, I guess, to special people.
I doubt it would happen for Cheryl Atkinson or Sean Hannity.
I believe there is a lot of improper stuff going on, including some of what you've discussed, things involving my own federal case against the intelligence agencies, the bad actors involved in that, and many other cases besides just campaign 2016, but yes, including campaign 2016.
And isn't it, do you, have you seen any evidence at all of Trump-Russia collusion in the 2016 election?
Any at all?
No, I mean, not only have I not, but I've compiled in the past and continued to update it.
Virtually every, if not every Democrat and Republican who has looked at the best evidence there is that we don't even know about classified evidence has said the same.
So I think that narrative has certainly dissolved.
But you have to, let me say, I think that narrative was built in part as the shiny ball to look at because those bad actors inside the Intel agency were fearful that the Trump administration would come in and find what they had done.
So they had to marginalize and controversialize them and try to undercut them before they could speak out.
And I'd argue they did it fairly successfully.
And then, you know, we didn't know for a long time who paid for the fusion GPS dossier.
They can argue all they want.
Well, the initial payments came from the Washington Free Beacon, but that predated anything involving Christopher Steele, who used questionable Russian sources, and Glenn Simpson admitting he never even tried to verify what was in the dossier.
And then his admission under, you know, when he was questioned by the House Intel Committee, his admission that he was coordinating, you know, dropping this information to the news media with the Clinton campaign.
Now, to me, isn't that bought and paid for Russian lies and propaganda?
It could be.
And let me take you back to the big picture.
Can I say that they were trying to use that to rig an election?
I think you can say that.
I think the evidence, I would say that that is an allegation that appears to have merit and deserves sorting through.
And you're free to conclude that that indeed happened.
Is that a logical conclusion?
Does it sound reasonable to you?
I think you're using your common sense.
I absolutely do.
By the way, don't you wish you weren't a journalist for a minute and you could just let it rip like this?
Well, I do, but I think that's your job.
You know, I'm happy doing what I do.
And I would just say, let me add to your theories and your common sense mine when you're discussing these things by saying before Trump was even running for president, I had been told by a very, very well-placed intelligence source in a very careful way, and this is someone who worked under President Obama, by the way, that the Intel community, some bad actors have been manufacturing allegedly bad or false information and presenting it to the FISA court to get things like this done.
This is before it allegedly happened to Trump.
So it makes sense that when that was uncovered, and the FISA court, since this stuff was never going to go to criminal court and no one would ever know that it was bad evidence, unlike in a normal case, because this was just to gather intel on somebody or political information or black men.
And it was first denied by the FISA court, and the pretext was under looking into Carter Page, but it was really the Trump campaign.
All right, stay right there.
Cheryl Atkinson, she is the host of Sinclair's Full Measure.
We'll get more of her thoughts on this.
All right, as we continue, Cheryl Atkinson is with us.
She hosts Sinclair's Full Measure, and we appreciate you taking the time to be with us.
I want to go through one other thing here, and this is what Sarah Carter is reporting today.
After Peter Strzzok sends Lisa Page the text on March 19 saying, oh, there's no there.
And with his position, he would know, considering that Russia was a specialty.
And then he's talking about joining the special counsel of Robert Mueller.
He sends another text right after it.
An investigation that leads to impeachment?
Maybe I should.
So he's saying there's no there there, but it may lead to impeachment.
And you add that to all the other texts that he sent that are anti-Trump, and you begin to get a different picture, right?
I think so.
I think that on its face appears wholly inappropriate.
And, you know, the idea that this independent investigation really was supposed to go above and beyond to make sure that despite how people feel personally, and that's supposed to be okay as long as they don't act on it.
But in this special independent investigation, I think they needed to be very, very careful about who they invited on and who they recruited.
Maybe they weren't nearly as careful as they should have been, or it's kind of hard for me to believe they didn't know about the feelings of some of these people they invited on that team at the time.
Okay, so you're more of a journalist than I am, and you know where I'm coming from in this.
And I think I'm right over the target.
And I think that I have pretty much peeled the onion away.
And I feel very confident in the things that I'm saying about a rigged primary, a rigged investigation into Hillary, an attempt at rigging a general election, and using phony propaganda from Russia to start spying on a presidential candidate, then president-elect.
Do you think I'm wrong in any way?
Any evidence in your mind that I'm wrong?
I don't see any evidence that you're wrong about the conclusions you're forming.
And it may be a bit early.
We don't have all the firm proof and interviews and so on to say that with authority, but I certainly don't think you're barking up the wrong tree.
All right.
We really appreciate it.
Cheryl Atkins.
And don't forget, you can get our brand new book, The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives, Fake News Controls What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote.
Really topical at this point.
Thank you so much, Cheryl Atkins, and all the best.
All right, 800-941, Sean.
We're going to hit the phone straight up when we get back.
What this is all about is further evidence of corruption, more than bias, but corruption at the highest levels of the FBI.
And that secret society, we have an informant that's talking about a group that were holding secret meetings off-site.
There's so much smoke here, there's so much suspicion.
Let's stop there.
A secret society, secret meetings off-site of the Justice Department.
Correct.
And you have an informant saying that.
Yes.
Is there anything more about that?
No, we have to dig into it.
This is not a distraction.
Again, this is biased, potentially corruption at the highest levels of the FBI that is now investigating.
And by the way, Robert Mueller used to run the FBI.
He is in no position to do an investigation over this kind of misconduct.
So I think at this point in time, we probably should be looking at a special counsel to undertake this investigation, but Congress is going to have to continue to dig.
I have heard from somebody that has talked to our committee that there is a group of individuals within the FBI that were holding secret off-site meetings.
Again, the Strzoken Page calling it a certain term.
I'm just saying off-site meetings.
Important stuff here.
How many agents were involved in these alleged meetings?
I'm not going to start pointing fingers from that standpoint again.
I'm just connecting the dots.
Bill, my committee has jurisdiction over federal records.
We have been investigating the Clinton email scandal since 2015.
We pretty well dropped it after the election, pretty much at the direction of President Trump.
He said, We don't prosecute people that we beat in elections.
But then once the Office Inspector General began its inspection and we found out about these texts, these texts pretty well laid in my lap as well.
And they really do raise very serious concerns about what is happening in the FBI.
All right, that was earlier, that was Ron Johnson being on Fox News talking about things that we've been talking about, and that is a secret society meeting off campus from the FBI as we continue our coverage of Deep Stategate, if you will.
I mean, I don't know what else to really call this, the subversion or the sabotage of a presidential election.
And joining us now is Byron York, and he writes for the Washington Examiner.
Been doing really good work on this and also doing very good work on the insanity of the anti-Trump movement out there.
How are you?
Hi, Sean.
Doing well.
Thank you.
All right, let's talk about this off-site FBI officials secret society, and what do you make out of that?
Well, I don't know what to make out of it.
I mean, the secret society is a reference in the texts.
And I will say from talking to people who've been going through these texts very carefully, it's hard to pull things together because there's a lot of gossip.
They're talking about whatever happened that day.
And it's sometimes difficult to see exactly what they're talking about.
As far as what Senator Johnson said about his informant who said there's this group that met off-site, I mean, that's extremely intriguing.
But we know more than that.
On the other hand, I was going to bring something up.
Senator Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, just delivered a speech on the floor of the Senate.
And there's a couple of things going on with him.
First of all, his committee is looking through the texts like everybody else.
And the second thing, remember, he and Senator Graham sent that criminal referral to the Justice Department about Christopher Steele, the British former spy who was the author of the dossier.
And they sent the letter and it got a lot of coverage, but they sent an underlying memo that explained why they were doing it.
And they felt that was very important for that ultimately to get out.
And some of it's classified.
So they have gone to the FBI and said, look, we want to release this memo because we think it's very important that the public understand what was going on between the FBI and Christopher Steele about this dossier.
Well, amazingly enough, the FBI has been dragging its feet.
And on the Senate floor not too long ago, the senator came out and accused the FBI of playing a, quote, bureaucratic game of hide the ball.
He is clearly losing his patience with them.
And I think this is something we're seeing across this whole investigation, which is this wall of classified information that investigators in Congress are trying to get through.
Senator Grassley also said it's time to see the Devin Nunes memo.
And not just the memo, but the underlying intelligence as well.
So I think we're seeing across the idea of the dossier or of the texts or the criminal referral or whatever else we're talking about.
I think we're seeing a growing impatience on Capitol Hill, mostly among Republicans, for this classified box that all of them have been kind of trapped in.
And I think in the next few weeks, they really want to get a lot of information out to the American public.
Well, I think we're going to get it.
I mean, I'm told any day now we're going to get a copy of that memo.
And probably when they get back next week, now I would assume they're going to wait until after the State of the Union on Tuesday.
You know, I've been explaining it this way, and you tell me anywhere you think that I'm wrong is Donna Brazil had to call Bernie Sanders and say that, yeah, the primary election was rigged.
We have an exoneration being written by anti-Trump pro-Hillary FBI agent Peter Strzzok and James Comey.
They begin the exoneration letter months before they interviewed the principals, including Hillary Clinton herself.
Now we have not only the talk of an insurance policy, but Loretta Lynch apparently deserves a profile and courage because Loretta Lynch knew that there was no way they would ever indict Hillary Clinton.
Again, that was July 1st before they interviewed her over the 4th of July weekend.
Comey then exonerates her, so I would argue the fix was in there in terms of, you know, she never was going to be, no matter where the evidence led, she was never going to be indicted, so they could keep her in the race.
And then, of course, she pays for between her money is funneled through her campaign through one lawyer, the DNC that Donna Brazil says she's controlling.
That money is funneled through the same lawyer.
They pay for a phony, salacious, unproven Russian dossier, mostly proven false at this point.
And they try to basically put the fix in on the general election.
And then that uncorroborated information is used to get a Pfizer warrant to spy on an opposition party candidate in a presidential year, and then an incoming president-elect and his team.
Am I missing anything here?
Am I wrong on any point?
No, no, you pretty much got it.
And, you know, one of the things that's a challenge here is I have really tried to focus on the Trump affair, the Trump-Russia affair.
But listening to you, and it's absolutely correct, the problem in doing that is that the Hillary Clinton investigation just flows into the Trump investigation at the FBI.
And the people who are doing it are the same people.
So when you look at these texts between Strzok and Page, they're talking about the Hillary Clinton investigation all the time, especially in that critical time of the end of June and beginning of July 2016 when they've already decided to exonerate her before not just she was interviewed, but a number of the main people in the case were interviewed.
So that's going on.
Did you ever hear of an exoneration letter being written months before the investigation really took place or took hold?
The answer is no, and I just don't see how anybody could really, anybody in the general public could really.
And where are your colleagues in the media?
I mean, I'm a talk show host, and I wear many hats.
Sometimes I do investigative work.
Sometimes I do reporting.
Sometimes I give my opinion.
Sometimes I moderate debates.
So I do a lot of different things, but an opinion journalist would be, or an advocacy journalist would fit my role.
But where are the objective journalists in this country?
Well, that's a good question.
What can I say?
I think what you're seeing now is, especially after all the talk about the House Intel Committee memo, finally some people at, say, the Washington Post or the New York Times are paying attention to it, if only to want to knock it down.
But I think attention to it is good because I think it should be released and the underlying intelligence should be released.
As you know, there's this Inspector General investigation at the Justice Department and the FBI.
1.2 million documents sent over.
We haven't heard a word about them yet.
Specifically about the handling of the Hillary Clinton investigation, because there's things in that Hillary Clinton investigation for everybody to be unhappy about.
And the way it does sort of just morph into the Trump investigation.
Within days of her being exonerated, Christopher Steele has written the first installment of his dossier.
So what can I say?
The Republican investigators you're seeing in the House Intelligence Committee, the Senate Judiciary Committee, don't forget the Senate Intelligence Committee as well.
I mean, it's taken a long time, but I do think in the next few weeks we're going to start seeing more and more findings coming out.
Well, this is what my sources are telling me, that number one, we're going to get the memo probably next week.
Number two, then we'll get the corroboration of the memo behind that.
Number three, that there's a lot more still to come even after that.
Now, what's fascinating to me is, well, that would tell me that Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, that would tell me that Andrew McCabe, James Comey all need to be investigated.
And I'd like to know why Rod Rosenstein was in Paul Ryan's office begging that the DOJ not have to turn over the information that led to the memo just hours before the deadline hit.
Yeah.
What you're going to see is with the release of this stuff, and I have to tell you, I have not seen this classified memo.
Well, nobody's seen it.
Nobody has seen it.
As far as I know, nobody on the outside side has seen it.
But I think you're going to see increased pressure on the political leadership of these departments after people actually know more stuff.
And when you see it and it's been revealed, then you're going to say, well, wait a minute.
Why were they trying to keep this secret the whole time?
We needed to know this.
So we'll see more and more.
As we continue with Byron York, he's a writer for the Washington Examiner.
One of the things Sarah Carter's put out today, now we know after Strzok sends Paige the text on March 19th regarding, well, there's no there there where he talks about Mueller's special counsel.
We also know what he said about an insurance policy, and we also know that he suggested that, in fact, he and Paige suggested that Loretta Lynch knew there was nothing that was ever going to happen even before they interviewed Hillary.
But when he talks about right after that Mueller's special counsel, he sends another text right after saying an investigation that leads to an impeachment question mark.
In other words, he says there's no there there than an investigation that leads to impeachment question mark, maybe I should.
Doesn't that tell us that in his mind he thought there was nothing that went wrong, nothing there, and he would know based on his position and that the only reason he would have involved himself in any way is because he might be able to upend a duly elected president?
Because it would be this big historic investigation.
But I think the no there there is really, really important because some people may have missed since this was at the beginning of the Mueller investigation.
They think, well, this is the beginning of the investigation.
No.
Strzzok had been involved in the Trump-Russia investigation from the very beginning.
And we know the FBI started that counterintelligence investigation in July of 2016.
Strzok is involved in it from the very beginning.
So when in May of 2017 he says it just looks like there's no there, he's been investigating it for 10 or 11 months.
So this is not just his sort of prospective look saying, eh, maybe there's nothing there.
He's actually been deeply involved in it.
He's the one who went to interview Michael Flynn at the White House.
He was deeply involved in all of this.
So for him to say in May of 2017, looks like there's no there there, that is a very telling comment about the state.
Well, that's why I'm calling it Deep Stategate state-sponsored sabotage, because they wanted to sabotage at every level and prevent A. They're even willing to use phony Russian paid-for propaganda to get a warrant to literally go after an opposition party candidate and then a president-elect because they want to overturn an election.
They wanted to first impact the election and then overturn the election.
And in the process, they're using the powerful tools of intelligence that we give the intelligence community, and they're abusing the FISA warrants and the FISA courts in the process as well.
Yeah, the biggest picture theme of this is exactly that, which is that use of the misuse, abuse of the intelligence agency, whom you're exactly right, we give these enormous powers to that meddled into our political process.
And don't forget how some of this stuff got started after the election, beginning on November 9th of 2016.
There was this wiretap that Michael Flynn was heard on talking to the Russian ambassador, which was, by the way, a perfectly normal thing for an incoming national security advisor to do.
And the Justice Department appears to be concerned about the Logan Act, which is, as we all know, completely never used statute that appeared to be just a pretense to start an investigation.
But it was the pretense to go over there to the White House, Agent Strong, by the way, go over to the White House and interview Michael Flynn.
And basically, his guilty plea on one count of lying to the FBI comes from that interview.
So, look, what you're saying is they have all these very powerful tools.
They knew everything Michael Flynn had said because he was illegally surveilled, not minimized, unmasked, and then raw intelligence.
So, it was a perjury trap from the get-go.
Either he misremembered or he lied.
But it doesn't matter.
They shouldn't have known ahead of time.
Thank you, Byron York.
We appreciate it.
800-941-Sean, I promise we're going to get to calls the next half hour.
Hannity tonight, Deep State Gate, state-sponsored sabotage.
Well, of all the latest details and more, Nine Eastern, must-see TV on the Fox News Channel.
If you look at what Andrew McCabe has done in serving this country, he was in the New York field office and the SWAT team.
He investigated and had a key role in investigating counterterrorism after September 11th.
He held management positions in the counterterrorism division and the FBI National Security Branch.
He was the first director of the high-value detainee interrogation group to get information from al-Qaeda to try to stop the next attack.
And he played a key role in investigating the Boston Marathon bombing and bringing those terrorists to justice.
Look at this man's face.
This man dedicated his life to you and to your family, keeping you safe from terror attacks in New York City, in Washington, D.C., across the country, serving with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
And because Donald Trump has completely blown through every single barrier, every single constitutional protection, now some are attacking this American hero because it just fits their political message of the day.
And Willie Geist, when you have Fox News declaring war, in their words, on the FBI and the Justice Department, the deep state there,
when you have people talking about secret societies inside of the FBI, that is out of what Erdogan's playbook was, Erdogan's playbook that he used in Turkey to undermine that democracy and to go after political rivals in his government.
And they're doing it here in America.
You know, it's pretty amazing.
It doesn't matter.
And I'm going to tell you what this is all about more than it's like they're scorned lovers.
Well, hear me out here.
There were BFF friends with the president, and they've had a falling out, and they can't handle the breakup.
And they're now unhinged.
And it's like, dimension, really dimension.
He's got Alzheimer's.
Early onset Alzheimer's.
I can't believe that the doctor said he got a 30 out of 30.
You know, Joe, nobody is slamming the entire FBI.
How many times have we made the distinction on this program about rank and file, FBI people, FBI, law enforcement people?
And by the way, isn't his network the network that, you know, didn't go after and has been generally supportive of the Black Lives Matter, pig in a blanket, pigs in a blanket, fry them like Bacon.
What do we want, dead cops?
When do we want them now?
And Obama invited some of those people from Black Lives Matter to the White House.
Hillary sought their endorsement.
None of that bothers Joe.
Well, we should call him Dr. Liberal Joe and Dr. Mika Brzezinski.
So now they're doctors and they're playing them on TV.
It's not rank and file intelligence, people.
We need intelligence, the most powerful tools of intelligence to go after evil in our time.
And those that do that job, we owe a debt of gratitude to.
And the same with FBI.
No one has supported, I think, in TV and radio on a national level, the law enforcement and our troops more than me.
Absolutely.
And I'm the one that's always saying give them the benefit of the doubt.
And I'm the one that, you know, is out there every time saying they deserve that and more.
But we have enough evidence now.
I mean, is Liberal Joe really going to make the case that Peter Strzok was involved in all of this with his mistress girlfriend?
Is he really going to make the case that what they were saying to each other is appropriate, that there's not a conflict of interest?
Is he not at all concerned when they talk about an insurance policy?
Is he not at all concerned that they're writing exoneration letters before investigations?
Is he not at all concerned that Donna Brazil says that the primary was rigged?
Is he not at all concerned that Comey and Strzok and Loretta Lynch knew ahead of time?
Because he's talking about the DOJ.
These are the highest-ranking members of the DOJ, that they all knew that they were never going to indict Hillary Clinton ahead of time.
We know crimes were committed.
I know he may like Hillary Clinton, but that shouldn't cloud his judgment.
Is that really the country we want where just a few people get to decide, you know what, we really want her to win, so we're going to allow her to stay in the race because if we followed the rule of law like we would for every other American, she would have been indicted, yeah, in the middle of a presidential election.
Yeah, it would have been chaotic.
Yes, it would have been difficult for the Democratic Party, but it would have been the right thing to do, especially when the evidence was so overwhelming and so controvertible on what Hillary did with the email server.
Do you believe in justice?
Do you believe in equal justice under the law?
And then you've got this whole issue of, okay, we really appreciate our intelligence officials and what they do, but if you weaponize it and you turn it against the American people, as it happened, I mean, think about this.
We're now turning the powerful tools of intelligence using Hillary Clinton's bought and paid for phony Russian narrative that she, the dossier, to try and influence the American people with phony lies, Russian lies in an election.
And then we're trying to use it and successfully use it to get a Pfizer warrant against your opponent and then a president-elect.
And then you're trying to use those powerful tools of intelligence to sabotage an incoming president.
I would think that that would bother.
You know, this, to me, isn't even a left-right issue.
This is a what-is-right issue.
And what is right here is you cannot weaponize the tools of intelligence.
You can't have a few people in the upper echelons of power deciding that they think it's too important not to apply the rule of law.
You know, you can't have elections of any kind in America rigged.
And the fact that every Bernie supporter is an up in arms over that is mind-numbing to me.
But this is something that civil libertarians and liberals and conservatives, Republicans, Democrats, I would think would all agree on.
But the problem is, you know, people like Joe and Mika, Liberal Joe, Dr. Liberal Joe and Dr. Mika Brzezinski, you know, that actually think that they can adequately, you know, determine the medical condition of people that they don't haven't, well, they don't have a medical degree.
I mean, it's just so idiotic on the surface.
And they've gone so over the top.
I mean, it's the best bit I've ever seen is them on Saturday Night Live.
The funniest thing I've ever seen.
So we have Deep Stategate and we have state-sponsored sabotage.
Not attacking the intelligence community.
I'm attacking those that abuse the weapons of intelligence.
Not attacking the FBI.
I'm attacking those in the FBI that are not applying the law as they properly should.
I've never heard of exonerations before investigations.
And the problem is for these guys, they've all bought into a narrative that has turned out to be false for a year.
That's why they're all clinging to Mueller wants to investigate and talk to Trump.
That's not even new news.
But they're acting as though it is because they know that everything else around them, their whole narrative and their whole belief system for a year and all the lies they told their audience for a year is now caving in upon them.
And the worst thing for them is their egos will not allow them to admit that they're wrong.
And people like, oh, Sean Hannity in Fox News was right.
They can't handle that part.
I'm fine with it.
I just, I don't give a flying rip what these people do.
And I don't think you could ever trust them.
I don't think anybody should ever trust them.
They're so freaking corrupt.
And I'll tell you what, that is all, you know what a lot of this is rooted in?
A desire to be liked.
A desire to be part of the club.
A desire to be invited to the parties, the soires that these people in the media have all the time.
A desire to be respected by them.
You know, the people I would want to hang out the least with in life are those people or the people that go to the White House correspondence there.
I'm so proud of the fact my 23rd year at Fox.
I've never been a one.
And as Fox tried to make me go a couple of years and I got sick the day before, it's unbelievable.
And I frustrated, I could tell you right now, I've frustrated the hell out of Roger Ells because he goes, you're going this year.
That's it.
I'm going.
You're going.
You're stuck.
I don't want to hear it.
And I called, I didn't call him.
I called the guy underneath him and I said, you got to tell the boss I'm really feeling bad today.
Started talking like Linda.
And I didn't go.
Take it easy there, champ.
She's not here to defend herself, okay?
Well, even if she was, we couldn't hear her.
It doesn't matter.
She has no voice at all.
I'll defend her.
Oh, here we come.
The sisterhood is back.
Here we go.
All right, let's get to our busy phones.
Nate is in Phoenix, 550 KFYI.
What's up, Nate?
How are you?
Sean, great to hear your voice, man.
Look, I'm just so impressed with you and your band of small band of patriots, what you guys have been able to discover, highlight, illuminate for the American public.
And my reason for calling, I was just so frustrated with the rank-and-file FBI, DOJ, CIA.
You know, as an American onlooker, if you will, with all the evidence that's been presented by you and your team, if this were like a cartel or a terrorist cell or a mafia group, my gut's got to say that the FBI rank-and-file would be all over it, and there'd be people perpwalked and put in jail.
But that being said, Cheryl said something that struck a chord with me because my generation, Watergate, doesn't necessarily resonate strongly with us.
Here's the thing: we've got to have checks and balances on the people that we give this enormous power and capability to.
Now, we give the most powerful weapons to our military, and we trust and believe that they'll always do the right thing.
And maybe you get 00000000.1% of people that maybe don't do the right thing, but the rest of them do.
Same with the intelligence community.
I am a strong believer in this world of evil, ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and radical Islam, and all these other crazy groups that we've got to defend ourselves.
And that includes Russia and Iran and China and any other North Korea, any other potential enemy nation.
And we need it, but we can't be using those weapons against the American people.
We can't be allowing Russia to influence our elections in any way.
Problem is that what they said about Trump wasn't true, but the person that did it was Hillary, and the media lost that whole story.
Let's say hi to Raul is in Fort Lauderdale.
Raul, how are you?
Hey, I'm doing great, Sean.
How are you doing?
I'm good.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
I'm a fellow martial artist.
I just haven't heard you say anything about martial arts in a long time.
I'm training five days a week now.
What kind of arts are you being trained in?
I teach Brazilian capoeira here in Fort Lauderdale.
Okay, I'm not familiar with that particular art, but I am.
Mine's a mixed martial arts.
Go ahead.
Is it branded jiu-jitsu?
No, it's the one that you do with that.
It's sort of like a dance at the same time, and there's a lot of gymnastics and kicks.
It's pretty popular.
The national just like to get.
Is this sort of you doing the horse's mane and pushing the ball and a little bit of artistry involved in the whole process to get your chi up?
No, completely opposite.
This is completely just.
All right, I will tell you what my mine is a very violent, eclectic blend of varying arts, crab magaz, Kempo, Jiu-Jitsu, and boxing and basic street fighting with a lot of training in blade and firearms as well.
That's what I do.
Oh, you're all around, basically.
Well, it's basically self-defense in a way that, you know, you break, you hurt, you destroy, you defend.
That's it.
Go on.
Well, good to hear that.
Anyways, I just wanted to call and thank you so much because, you know what?
I am one of those guys that should be the ones that you say hate on Trump.
I'm an immigrant.
I'm Latino.
I'm also what you consider African-American.
I'm black, but I'm Latino.
And you know what?
Because of everything that you've done for the last couple of years now, it's like I took the red pill, like in the Matrix.
You're Morpheus, man, because I woke up.
I got educated to just listening to you every day while I drive my truck and got to come home and answer all the questions to my wife and family.
And it's just been a blessing.
Listen, we work.
I appreciate it so much and the fact that you have an open mind.
Listen, I'm open.
If anyone wants to say that I'm wrong on something, tell me and I will tell the audience I think I got this wrong.
You know, putting this together has been more difficult than I can explain to some people.
They want answers immediately, but, you know, in a story like this, you're literally, it's a mystery and you're unpeeling the layers of the onion and we're getting, you know, a bite here and a bite here and a bite here.
Now it's coming fast and furious.
But listen.
Not in a million years would I think that we would have gotten to the point that it's gotten with you right now because you have brought it all to the forefront and nowhere do you hear this story anywhere else, anywhere else.
And I'm shocked that it's even Congress is catching up.
Finally, the Republicans in Congress are catching up.
And listen, I appreciate it.
Warrior, God bless you.
I appreciate you.
And, you know, I send all strength and honor your way.
All right, that's going to wrap things up for today.
All right.
We have a lot of breaking news we'll get to tonight as the media is in full force distraction mode as we've got Sarah Carter, Greg Jarrett, Jason Chaffetz, Alan Dershowitz, Judge Piro tonight, Geraldo, and Larry Elder.
All right, news you won't get anywhere else.
9 Eastern.
Set your DVR, Hannity, on the Fox News channel.
We'll see you tonight at 9.
Back here tomorrow.
Thanks for being with us.
You want smart political talk without the meltdowns?
We got you.
I'm Carol Markowitz, and I'm Mary Catherine Hamm.
We've been around the block in media, and we're doing things differently.
Normally is about real conversations.
Thoughtful, try to be funny, grounded, and no panic.
We'll keep you informed and entertained without ruining your day.
Join us every Tuesday and Thursday, normally, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Ben Ferguson.
And I'm Ted Cruz.
Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
Nationwide, we have millions of listeners.
Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court.
And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else.
We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family.
So down with Verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts.
What I told people I was making a podcast about Benghazi, nine times out of ten, they called me a masochist, rolled their eyes, or just asked, why?
Benghazi, the truth became a web of lies.
From Prologue Projects and Pushkin Industries, this is Fiasco, Benghazi.
What difference at this point does it make?
Listen to Fiasco, Benghazi, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Export Selection